Getting 'global' in our thinking about global warming

As we approach the International Conference on Global Warming in Copenhagen next month, some improvident e-mails allegedly sent by climate scientists have further inflamed the debate over global warming here at home. Yet the most persistent argument against global warming remains that the last decade has seen global cooling, a charge based upon a selective reading of annual average global temperatures.

It's true that 1998 saw an unusual spike in average global temperatures, fueled largely by a powerful El Niño in the Pacific Ocean. This one-year anomaly was followed by two countervailing low-temperature years before returning to the longer-term warming trend, thus leading analysts using 1998 as their base year to conclude that the global warming picture had changed.

But it's more accurate to view five- or 10-year averages that smooth out single-year fluctuations, in which case the continuation of global warming is clear; average temperatures since 1998 are well above the average of the 10 years before 1998. There has not been a "cooling trend" over the past decade as global warming critics maintain.

So I remain convinced that warming is real, that we significantly contribute to it by our carbon dioxide emissions, and thus it's only prudent to take steps to reduce those emissions. Precisely because I take this seriously, however, I'm also worried about our ability to head off the most serious consequences of anthropogenic climate change.

My greatest concern is that the efforts of developed countries to reduce our CO2 emissions will be meaningless without equal progress in the developing world, particularly China and India. Although China has recently announced bold targets for long-term emission reductions, to date it's hard to match its record with its rhetoric.

In 2006, China for the first time surpassed the U.S. in total CO2 emissions, exceeding 6 billion metric tons at the same time we dipped just below that level. Preliminary figures indicate that last year China's emissions exceeded 7.5 billion metric tons, while the U.S. was just under 5.7 billion. Broader global figures generally conform to this pattern, with modest emission reductions by developed countries more than offset by large increases in developing countries.

The major industrial powers at their 2008 G-8 summit set as a goal reducing global CO2 emissions to half its 1990 level by 2050. Through 2008, those developed countries' emissions were 2.5 percent below their 1990 level, which is modest but measurable progress. At the same time, emissions by developing countries were nearly 140 percent greater than their 1990 levels and still growing. In fact, total emissions from developing countries now exceed that of developed countries -- and the gap is increasing.

About the same time that China surpassed the U.S. in CO2 emissions, India passed Japan. Soon it will exceed Russia to become the third-largest country in CO2 emissions. In many ways, India poses an even greater challenge to controlling CO2 emissions than China. While China is rapidly expanding its industrial production, it has largely completed the task of bringing electricity to all of its citizens; by contrast, a third of India's population still has no electricity. With a total population that is approaching -- and before long may exceed -- China's, it's unrealistic to expect that India will continue to have CO2 emissions little more than one-fifth of China's today.

While the Copenhagen conference reportedly has already given up on adopting new binding CO2 emission targets for either developed or developing nations, I suggest we start crafting contingency plans for how to deal with the global warming likely to occur if the necessary targets for reduction aren't met. I fear we'll need them.

Jack Roberts was Oregon labor commissioner from 1995 to 2002 and now heads the Lane Metro Partnership.